Lower Stowford Farmhouse

Lower Stowford Farmhouse is probably a 16th-century farmhouse that was improved in the 17th century and modernised in the 19th century. It is built of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with a stone rubble stack with roughly dressed quoins topped with 19th-century brick in the hall and a late 19th-century brick stack at the service end. The roof is corrugated iron, originally thatched.

The original house comprised three rooms and a through passage, facing south-east, with an inner room at the north-eastern end. A fourth room, at the left end and used as a store, was probably added in the 19th century. The hall has a large projecting lateral stack, and the service end room has a large rear projecting lateral kitchen stack. 19th and 20th-century outshots have been added to the rear. The main house is two storeys high, with an irregular three-window front. Most windows are late 19th and early 20th-century casements with glazing bars. The ground floor hall window and the window of the inner room chamber are slightly earlier, being three-light casements with rectangular panes of leaded glass. A 20th-century plank door sits in the front passage. To the right of the doorway is the hall stack with weathered offsets and the lower part of the original chimney shaft, replaced with 19th-century brick at the top. To the left is a secondary doorway into the service end room (the kitchen), and another doorway to the store. The roof is half-hipped to the right and gable-ended to the left; the roof steps down in level from right to left over the service end room, and the lower section may be 19th century.

Internal inspection was limited, but the house appears to have undergone little modernisation since the 19th century. The layout suggests the original house is well-preserved, although few early features are exposed. The service end is mainly 19th century. The kitchen fireplace features a brick design with a plain oak lintel and fire window. Plaster screens hide the passage, and the hall fireplace is blocked. The hall was floored in the mid-17th century with an axial beam, featuring a soffit-chamfered design with double bar-scroll stops. There are some possibly 17th-century plank doors with coverstrips. The inner room and first floor were not accessible, but an early roof is said to survive.